Denny Strecker’s Blog

Play along with me for a moment…

What would your reaction be if you just won $25,000 on a game show?

You’d probably say you felt thrilled, elated, or excited.

You would, huh? What if I told you more about the circumstances involved…

You were doing great and had progressed to the last round. You had already won $500,000, but you chose to risk that amount to go for the million dollar question. Unfortunately, you got it wrong and ended up with “only” $25,000.

Now how would you feel? Disappointed, mad at yourself, and just plain awful, right?

So why do you feel so bad if you are walking away with $25,000 more than you had before?

You feel awful because of how you interpret that event. If you focus on what might have been, you will feel very unhappy. But with conscious effort, you can choose to focus on the $25,000 you won rather than the $475,000 you lost.

Here is a great truth of life – what determines our happiness is not so much what happens to us as how we feel about it. Our reaction determines whether we interpret events as positive or negative.

People tend to naturally see the negative side of things because they are easier to find. I was speaking with a parent who was quite upset because she had just learned that she was loosing her job and she is the bread winner for the family.

When she told me the news I immediately responded, “Congratulations! That is great news!!”

She looked at me with a look of utter confusion and said, “Did you hear what I said? I am going to loose my job. This is terrible news.”

I replied, “You have hated your job for years and you said there was no chance of advancement any more so this is great news. Now you can look for something you will enjoy doing and that you will be able to advance in. Who knows? You might even find something that pays more than what you are earning now.”

You choose how to “feel” about events that happen to you. When something happens in your life, look at it from all sides and see where the positives are and focus on them.

A good way to see if you are a positive or a negative person is to look at your children. How do they deal with negative situations? They have learned how to cope from you, so if they are always negative, there is a good chance they learned that from you.

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This is a dangerous time!

With summer in full swing, children have the tendency to get lazy. They want to sleep at all hours, lay on the couch, watch mind numbing TV, and declare, "I’m bored."

If you allow this behavior to develop, you are sending the wrong message to your child. When was the last time you were able to take 2 months off of work, do nothing, and then just go back in the fall? The real world does not operate that way. It is our job as parents to prepare our children for real life.

I have a tool for you to use to help keep your child a goal for the summer - and even all year long! It is a chore allowance system that you can use. The key is to have fun with it. Make up some easy rewards your child will be able to purchase. But, also create some wild and crazy ones.

Go ahead and put that family trip to the Bahamas on there. It may cost $1,000,000 in allowance checks but SO WHAT!!!!

Click Here to Download your Allowance Chore Checks Program.

If you have any questions about how to use this program, please feel free to ask it in the comments section of this post and I will be happy to help you get started.

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Many years ago, a martial arts student lived in a temple. One day, his teacher and the temple elders decided to send the student on a quest. Upon being summoned, the student was both elated and fearful as he appeared before the elders. They told the student that he must travel to a temple in a far-off foreign land to complete his training. When he arrived, the teachers there would share all their secrets with him.

The student’s travels were filled with many trials and tribulations; he battled many vagabonds, bullies and street thugs. He finally arrived at the distant temple, after walking for almost a year, tattered, weathered, but a different man. He was greeted as a champion and was led directly into the chamber of elders.

The elders handed him a beautiful, leather-bound book, The Book of Knowledge. The book had only one page, which was a mirror. Of course, the student/warrior only saw his reflection. He became frustrated and asked, “Is this a joke?” The elders said, “You are the only one besides us who has made the journey and survived. You are the living example; you can now take our place as the elder and run the temple, so we can leave.” The warrior threw the book to the ground, breaking the mirror. Loudly, he said, “I am happy to be able to have lived the lessons, but I will not waste my time in this jail when so many things are still to be learned.” He then left.

This story is a fine example of the quest for martial arts training. Today, students are not as patient as they once were and they do not realize that lessons are not always clear. The lessons are their experiences, failures, successes, bumps and bruises, frustrations, and their trust in their teachers.
Lessons are constantly presented to you, if you chose to learn. The road to success is paved in sweat, hard work and determination. A very wise man once told me, “The only thing of any worth is something you worked hard for.” Trust in your teacher, but work hard and live the lessons - train to live - live to train. Be the example - live the Black Belt, don’t just tie it around your waist.

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